Name Irene Priest  
Age when entered care 6 years old  
Year of birth 1956 
Time in care 1962–2004  
Type of care facility Disability facility – the Kimberley Centre in Taitoko Levin   
Ethnicity New Zealand European    
Whānau background Irene is Margaret’s younger sister. Their parents were loving and caring, and they had a relatively happy early life.
Currently Today, Irene lives a happy and fulfilled life. Margaret is Irene’s welfare guardian, it is a joint Welfare Guardianship with her daughter (Irene’s niece). Irene has a caregiver who looks after her closely and she sees Margaret regularly.

My sister Irene Priest has a learning disability and has been in care since she was 6 years old. Irene can’t speak for herself – she communicates through actions, for example, she’ll growl if she is unhappy and will smile and clap her hands if she agrees or is happy.

Irene couldn’t walk so my mother taught her to climb. However, she would climb out of windows and my parents were worried so they strapped Irene to her bed at night. I shared a room with Irene and I remember her fighting against the straps. I would stroke her head to calm her down.

My mother found it difficult to look after Irene. My father was working and my mother had no assistance from the government or disability services to look after Irene. She was prescribed tranquilisers because she could not cope. My father tried his best to balance looking after Irene and my mother. He investigated if there were any care facilities that might help look after Irene and heard about the Kimberley Centre through our family doctor, who pulled some strings to get Irene to the top of the waiting list.

So Irene went away to the Kimberley Centre, which was promoted as a training school. It broke my parents’ hearts to send Irene away, but they thought she would be better off. She went there in 1962 and was a resident until 2004.

When Irene was first admitted, my parents were told by the staff to leave her there for at least a month, without any contact. However, during that time they were told Irene had contracted hepatitis. No explanation was given for this. I remember going with my parents to pick Irene up. She had been placed in an isolation room, and she was alone on her bed, rocking backwards and forwards. There was nothing else in the room, except her bed. She didn’t even have her teddy bear, which she had taken to the Kimberley Centre.

Irene came home most weekends and she never wanted to return. When my parents started driving her back, she would growl. That’s her way of showing unhappiness. I don’t think she was given any love at the Kimberley Centre – the staff didn’t see her as a child who needed love and care. Most of the staff didn’t care about the residents – they saw it as just a job. Kimberley was just a place of people existing.

Irene communicates through actions but the staff at the Kimberley Centre never made any effort to communicate with her. When I was older and more involved in her care, I asked the staff if they would investigate developing a specific sign language for Irene, which would allow her to point to pictures, but they didn’t do that.

Irene would sometimes come home with injuries such as scarring, stitches or grazes, and no explanation was given. I now know from her file that she was physically assaulted several times by other residents. I counted 77 head injuries recorded in her file and that is with almost 30 years of records missing. She was also put into seclusion as a punishment, for a total of 18 days, sometimes for a few days in a row. To put somebody who is claustrophobic, or was, in seclusion where it wasn't even a safe environment, is reprehensible. Once she was in seclusion for eight hours. I can only imagine how distressing this would have been for her. Another time she came out with an injury from her time in there.

She didn’t get any education or training at the Kimberley Centre. In fact, she regressed. She was learning things at home, like how to use a spoon or go to the toilet without a nappy, but she wasn’t able to do these things when she left the Kimberley Centre.

Another consistent issue was the loss of Irene’s personal items. The Kimberley Centre had a communal laundry and anything that was good just disappeared.

The worst thing that happened to Irene at the Kimberley Centre was the indiscriminate drugging. She was on a concoction of drugs that had all sorts of side effects – drowsiness, nausea, fatigue and co-ordination disturbance. She was given a drug or injection to stop her periods. Melleril was the worst – Irene was like a zombie on Melleril and my father, who was a pharmacist, advocated for a long time to ensure Irene was given the appropriate drugs. While there were alternatives to drugging Irene if she was hyperactive, I think because the Kimberley Centre was understaffed, drugs were an easy way to subdue residents. When she was weaned off drugs in the late 2000s she became very perky.

Irene got very thin in her 40s. She weighed around 33 kilograms and it was a shocking sight. Our family doctor ordered blood tests because he thought she might have AIDS – that’s how awful she looked. My father wanted the Kimberley Centre to refer Irene to a specialist but this was met with resistance from the manager and the Kimberley Centre doctor, who said there was no point in a second opinion.

We found out around this time that she was being placed in a special chair where she was strapped in and force fed. Irene has trouble eating. My father explained that all it requires is patience, but the staff didn’t listen. This had lasting effects on Irene – for many years, if anyone came to feed her, she cowered, and it could take up to two hours to feed her because she was so afraid.

Irene also had problems with her teeth and was scared of going to the dentist. Because of the difficulty, the staff at the Kimberley Centre decided it would be easier if all her teeth were removed. If felt like a final indignity.

The Kimberley Centre was a hellhole. Irene never deserved to be hurt or frightened – she deserved to have the best life that was available to her, but that has not happened.[54]